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THE CALL 
OF THE MASTER 





BY REGINALD HEBER HOWE 




Class 

Book 

CoMghtN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE CALL OF THE MASTER 



OR 



©It? Tlnt« af 3lp0«0 to Mm 
3ln % ^trwa of 3jtf?, 



BY 



REGINALD HEBER HOWE, D. D. 



»- 3 3 5 

,3 3 3 3 3 

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New York: 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 Bible House 



IVIAR 10 1904 

CLASS 0- XXc. 5^0 
COPY S 



syrs 



COPYRIGHT 1904 
REGINALD HEBER HOWE 



TO 

S. A. H. 

AN HELPMEET 

THOUGHTFUL EVER 

OF OTHERS FIRST 

OF HERSELF LAST 



CONTENTS. 



The Voice of Jesus as He Speaks to 
Man in the Stress of Life. 

I In Distractions 

II In Temptation 

III In Doubt 

IV In Poverty 

V In Discouragement 

VI In Sorrow 



fr^farf* 



The following Lectures were given by invita- 
tion of the late Dr. Lindsay, at the Noon Day 
Service, at St. PauPs Church, Boston, during the 
Season of Lent, one each week. 

Two considerations and two only justify their 
publication. 

The first is found in their subject : "The Voice 
of Jesus as He Speaks to Man in the Stress of 
Life." There is no one who sooner or later in one or 
other of its forms does not know and feel that stress, 
no one then,, who does not long for some voice com- 
petent to speak to it, and the inquiry, the supreme 
inquiry of the day is, if I mistake not, What does 
Jesus say ? 

The second, in testimony that has reached 
me through him who asked me to give them, and 
from others, of their helpfulness, and my hope, 
therefore, that a larger circle may find them help- 
ful too. 

Reginald Heber liowE. 

THE RECTORY 
CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR 
X-ONGWOOD 



" I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
* Come unto me and rest ; 

Lay down, thou weary one, lay down 
Thy head upon my breast :' 

I came to Jesus as I was, 
Weary, and worn, and sad ; 

I found in Him a resting place, 
And He has made me glad." 



^xBtmtimnB, 

Co7ne tinto Me all ye that labour^ and are 
heavy laden ^ a7id I will give you rest, — St. 
Matthew XI. 28. 

There are many subjects which one 
would like to speak about at these special 
services in Lent. But it has seemed to 
me that there is one pre-eminent above 
all others, more deeply and truly satisfying 
than any. And that is The Voice of 
Jesus Christ as He speaks to man amid 
what we might call the stress of human 
life. What He has to say to us as day by 
day we encounter, as who of us does not, 
those things which are disturbing to the 
true peace of life* We come in here, into 
these quiet courts for a brief half hour or 
more, the very noise and turmoil of the 
street we leave w^ithout, an image often of 
the disturbance and turmoil of our souls 
under some form of life's experience, and 
what is it that we crave, you and I ? Is it 
not for something, some word spoken, or 



6 The Voice of Jesus 

some message from hymn or prayer, that 
will quiet all this, that will say to us as 
One did once to the stormy waters of an 
inland sea " Peace be still, and there was 
a great calm,'' that will come with a mes- 
sage to us under whatever is resting 
heavily upon us, and send us forth the 
stronger and the calmer for what we have 
heard here. I feel sure I do not misread 
you when I say that. 

And from whom can this message come 
with such power, with such authority, as 
from Him who at once God and Man 
spake as God, yet knowing all of man's in- 
firmity. Behold then, the Person of Jesus. 
He is the One I would set before you all 
these days. Hear Him saying, who else 
would have dared to, would not have 
shocked our every sensibility — "Come 
unto Me all ye that labour, and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." Those 
words dear to us in our Bibles, made yet 
more dear as one of the four comfortable 
words of our Communion Office are to be 



TO Man in Distractions 7 

the great undertone invitation to us these 
Saturdays, as we think of our need and its 
supply under the stress of Distractions, of 
Temptation, of Doubt, of Poverty, of Dis- 
couragement, of Sorrow, those perhaps 
most common hindrances to our peace. 
They are, I need hardly say, broad and 
inclusive words, not to be narrowed to any 
single form of need or of cure. All that 
labor and are heavy laden under what- 
ever weight, rest ! — what would be rest 
under the particular burden whatever it 
it may be. 

To-day we are to think of Life's Dis- 
tractions and the voice of Jesus to us 
amid them. Naturally they come first, 
as Lent primarily is a call to us to come 
away from them, as far as we can to lay 
them, aside and bid them not interfere 
with our spiritual life. For this they most 
surely do. In this busy, strenuous age 
they, as much if not more, than any other 
one thing, I had almost said, are hostile to 
the soul's health and growth. How in 



^ The Voice of Jesus 

evidence they are! What an array arise 
before us when we pause to think of them 
as they are common to man under the 
different conditions under which he lives. 
No former age exhibits business done at 
such a pace as it is to day. The very 
inventions that have been supposed to 
promote it and which do, have only 
quickened its speed and increased its 
volume. The pace set in one department 
or in one city determines the pace in an- 
other. No man can escape from it and 
succeed. From morning till night, day 
after day business drives men on and on, 
until strength is gone or life has been 
almost lived, under the never ceasing spur, 
the universal quest for gain. Many a man 
would confess, some most reluctantly, 
that his business is so engrossing that he 
has little strength, little time, little thought 
left for what concerns the less material 
side of life. Some take it even into their 
Sundays, and scan the quotations of the 
market as eagerly in their Sunday paper 



TO Man in Distractions 9 

or resort to their Post Office Box or even 
their office, as regularly as on other days. 

And the gain which comes when it does 
come, brings its own distractions. It 
creates and makes possible many interests 
that otherwise would not be. Indeed in 
one sense the distractions of life seem 
mostly to go with the abundance of life. 
The prize I have been striving for, which 
has urged me on and for which I have 
labored hard al! these years, lo ! I have 
won it, now how shall I enjoy it.^^ A per- 
fectly legitimate question and desire. And 
to a life already full, each according to his 
taste, adds new interests. Into a costly 
dwelling, into society and its manifold 
claims, into art or music or foreign travel, 
into the gratification of public or social 
ambition one throws his energies, and for 
quiet thought or taking the measure and 
proportion of things, there is less timiC than 
ever. Do we not recognize the picture ? 

But this is only one side of it. There 
are distractions of a very different kind 



lo The Voice of Jesus 

The prize often is not won. Instead of 
the satisfaction, the enthusiasm, the intox- 
ication of success, perhaps there is failure. 
The unceasing labor goes on and there is 
little to show for it except what meets the 
requirements of each day as it comes, and 
on into the future as far as the eye can 
see stretches the same dull path of duty^ 
with nothing to enliven it — life shorn of 
its amenities. Distraction is there none 
here ? Ah, )/es ! But now, that which 
comes from disappointment, from carking 
care, from a mind perturbed and dis- 
traught with conditions it would give any 
thing to change, but which it seems pow- 
erless to do. 

Those of which we have spoken con- 
cern for the most part the men. There 
are those just as real to the other sex and 
as opposed to quietness of mind, to that 
composure of spirit essential to one's best 
nature that it should sometimes be. In 
the world of society an incessant round 
of engagements, a hurried flying from 



TO Man in Distractions ii 

one social function to another, night 
turned into day to eke out the insufficient 
hours, sapping the physical strength, un- 
dermining the health, rendering one unfit 
for one's best in anything, the ordained 
rest of the Sabbath founded as much on 
physical as on sacred laws, distorted to uses 
for which six afternoons are not thought 
adequate. In humbler homes the ceaseless 
round of domestic duties, with little to 
cheer the jaded spirit, sheer bodily and 
mental weariness incapacitating for any 
thought above the next meal to be pre- 
pared, the next garment to be mended. 
These are among the distractions of life. 
I need not dwell on them. You know 
them as well as L From out such dis- 
tractions of one sort or another we who 
are here this morning have come. They 
constitute one form of what I have called 
the stress of life, as we are conscious of it, 
as we feel it day by day. And if we look 
into our own hearts and answer honestly 
the question we put to them, we are bound 



12 The Voice of Jesus 

to say that it is in part because of just 
such things that the lamp of our religious 
life is burning low, we are not feeding it 
at the great sources of supply, it is dying 
of neglect. 

Now, men have been conscious of all 
this, and the consciousness has led to ex- 
pedients, if so be they might remedy the 
evil or at least forget it. And the human 
expedients have been of two and wholly 
opposite kinds. On the one hand there 
has been what we might call the homeo- 
pathic treatment. They have only accel- 
erated the pace. They have plunged more 
deeply still into the strenuous life that at 
least they might not hear the admonishing 
voice of conscience inquiring, is this for 
what you have the sacred gift of life, is 
this all for which it should stand? They 
have drowned the sensibilities of the soul 
in a yet more arduous labor, in a yet 
greater whirl of excitement* We know 
we should, but we do not want to think 
of other things. 



TO Man in Distractions 13 

And the other expedient has been 
asceticism, withdrawal from the world alto- 
gether, retirement into a cell, or a convent, 
or a monastery, only to find as has often 
been the case, not only that it is really a 
retreat from dangers, which it would be 
braver and healthier to face and conquer; 
but that it has temptations of its own 
insidious and powerful. 

What is the voice of Jesus to it all ? 
To Him, to Him, we turn for the supreme 
word. Had he anything to say as to 
the stress cf life that com.es of the dis- 
tractions of life? We listen for that voice 
with an eagerness born of the depth with 
which we have felt their force. Could it 
be that there is anything that has to do 
with the obstacles to man's highest inter- 
ests and the means of surmounting them 
not known to him ? We go to the record 
of that completest life, to that guide by, 
which to live for our answer. 

The human Jesus v/ell knew essentially 
this impediment and felt its force himself, 



14 The Voice of Jesus 

yet more, recognized it as it came to his 
disciples, and followers and saw its effect. 
I take but a few examples. 

It was just after the beheading of John 
the Baptist. Beside the strong personal 
emotion which the death of one whom 
Jesus had known and loved could not fail 
to cause, it was a time of popular excite- 
ment. '*When Jesus heard of it," we read- 
**He departed thence by ship into a 
desert place apart, but the people followed 
him on foot out of the cities.*' The Pass- 
over was approaching, and all the roads of 
Galilee were thronged with companies of 
pilgrims hastening to Jerusalem to keep 
the feast. The twelve, too, had just 
returned from their missionary circuit. 
The agitated conditions, the disturbed 
state of mind which could not but follow 
as a consequence are vividly brought out 
in one or two graphic touches by St 
Mark: "There were many;'' he says, "com- 
ing and going, and they had no leisure so 
much as to eat." The whole bustling. 



TO Man in Distractions 15 

unreposeful scene rises before us. Jesus 
felt it, felt it for himself and for His Dis- 
ciples. "Come ye," He said unto them 
— the term you note includes himself, 
''Come ye yourselves, apart into a desert 
place and rest awhile." It was not a soli- 
tary instance. More than once when He 
had been teaching or when there had been a 
full crowded day, we read that He with- 
drew into a desert place apart or into a 
mountain alone. Once after healing at 
even many sick persons, in the morning, 
rising up a great Vv^hile before day, He 
went out and departed into a solitary 
place and there prayed. One day one of 
the company said unto Him, "Master speak 
to my brother that he divide the inheri- 
tance with me," and the diverting power of 
the quest for gain, how, when successful, it 
absorbs the being, to the exclusion of 
everything not material. He sets forth 
in the parable of the rich man, "Take heed 
and beware of covetousness, for a man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the 



i6 The Voice of Jesus 

things which he possesseth/' ''The ground 
of a certain rich man brought forth 
plentifully. And he thought within him- 
self saying, what shall I do, because I have 
no room, where to bestow my fruits, and 
he said, this will I do, I will pull down my 
barns and build greater. And I will say 
to my soul, Soul thou hast much goods 
laid up for many years, take thine ease? 
eat, drink and be merry. But God said 
unto him : Thou fool, this night thy soul 
shall be required of thee, then v/hose shall 
tho?e things be which thou hast provided.^^" 
Take an instance of another of the 
kinds of engrossment of which we spoke 
and yet very common and very real. 
Jesus was at Bethany, at that house which 
came nearer than any other on earth to 
being a place where He could lay his head. 
There were the two sisters so closely 
associated with him through all his active 
ministry. Mary sat at Jesus' feet and 
heard his word. But Martha was cum- 
bered with much serving. She came to 



TO Man in Distractions ij 

Jesus and said, "Lord dost thou not care 
that my sister hath left me to serve alone, 
bid her therefore that she help me. And 
Jesus answered and said unto her, ''Martha, 
Martha, thou art careful and troubled 
about many things, but one thing is need- 
ful and Mary hath chosen that good part 
which shall not be taken away from her." 
What do the Saviour's words in all 
these instances say to us, essentially the 
same thing, only suited each to the special 
circumstances of the occasion : — There 
must be moments of retirement from the 
distracting causes. If there cannot be of 
place, there must be in spirit. There 
must be quiet and meditation. The soul 
must have opportunity in some way to look 
in upon itself — aye, to look up above the 
disturbances to its peace. It may surround 
itself with everything meaning its earthly 
satisfactions, but at what fearful cost, if 
with no other. The faithful performance 
of our duties in life, be they ever so 
humble, be they only routine drudgery, it 



i8 The Voice of Jesus 

is a noble, honorable thing to do, but 
careful and troubled about these things, 
we must not be to the extent of forgetting 
the one thing needful. 

This is the way in the presence, of this 
stress of life that Jesus says: ''Come unto 
Me and I will give you rest." "Come ye 
yourselves apart into a desert place and 
rest awhile.'' We are not to live here 
forever. "Mary hath chosen that good 
part which shall not be taken away from 
her." It is the principle of the Quiet 
Day. It is the principle of the season of 
Lent. It is the principle of serving God 
as one of our collects puts, it; "with a 
quiet mind." "The Church," it has been 
truly said, "never needed the doctrine 
of religious stillness and r e t i r em e n t 
more than now. We are hurrying on 
with a fast-living and outward-living gener- 
ation, in a self indulgent, showy, noisy age." 

^*By all means use sometimes to be alone, 
Salute thyself ; see what thy soul doth wear : 
Dare to look in thy chest, for ^tis thine own, 
And tumble up and down, what thcu findest 
there/' 



TO Man in Distractions 19 

*'In silence and in stillness a religious soul 
advantageth herself.'' 

But the voice of Jesus to us under 
these conditions I should have very inad- 
equately set forth did I stop here. We 
should have lost the end in the means. 
This invitation was to come apart and rest 
awhile. Jesus never condemned the rich, 
because they were rich and had accumu- 
lated much goods. He loved Martha as 
well as Mary. For the most part our 
lives have to be passed amid distractions. 
The making of quiet periods, or only 
quiet moments, is in order that when we 
go back, as back we must, into the strain 
of life, we may go stronger therefor, 
less likely to be overcome thereby, and 
lose our perspective. This was the Mas- 
ter's example as well as the Master's word. 
Apart into a desert place and then back 
among the multitude. Up into the moun- 
tain and then down on the plain with the 
people. ''Did he say," inquires another. 
"Stay apart, scorn society, escape like a 



20 The Voice of Jesus 

sentimental hermit from mankind, because 
mankind are bad? Never that. Rest 
awhile, but when the noisy comers and 
goers, fainting, sinning, dying, needed his 
gracious ministries again. He broke up 
his rest and went back to feed their hunger, 
to heal their sick, to wash their feet. Our 
religion is one half the loving adoration 
of God, the other half is the loving service 
of the brother whom we have seen — our 
fellowman. Get down on your knees 
alone, or you will begin no work aright 
and then up and be doing." 

I do not know from out what distrac- 
tions you, and you, and you have come in 
here this morning. Every man knoweth 
the plague of his own heart. I doubt not 
every one of us, from some of those that I 
have mentioned, and that you are con- 
scious of its having been a hindrance to 
your best life. But I do know that there 
is one. He who knew what was in man, 
who realized this difficulty with which we 
hare to contend, who felt it himself and 



TO Man in Distractions 21 

for others, who looks compassionately up- 
on you, who bade you get away from them 
for a time if you can, if not, then in the 
midst of them, make place and opportunity 
for the upward eye, bid the soul be still 
and refresh itself in Him according to the 
multitude of his loving kindnesses. 

"Then be ye sure that Love can bless 
Even in this crowded loneliness, 
Where evermoving myriads seem to say 
Go— thou art naught to us, nor we to 
thee — away." 

"There are in this loud stunning tide 

Of human care and crime, 
With whom the melodies abide 

Of th' everlasting Chime. 

May we, may you and I be ot them. 



"^ 



^. 



SH|^ U0t« 0f 3itmB to Mnn xn 
SI:em$itHtt0n- 

Come unto Me all ye that labour^ and are 
heavy lade7t, and I will give you test, — St. 
Matthew XI. 28. 

As I said last week, these words are 
to be the great undertone invitation to us 
on these Saturdays in Lent, as we listen 
for the voice of Jesus as he speaks to 
man amid the stress of life: the stress 
of Distractions, of Temptation, of Doubt, 
of Poverty, of Discouragement, of Sorrow, 
those perhaps, most common hindrances 
to the true peace of life, the bidding, - — 
only a mockery unless He be one who can 
make good His promise, — if we would be 
strong and calm among them, to come 
unto Him. Today we are to go to Him, 
to hear what He has to say to us and can 
do for us under the stress of temptation. 

Is it not such.f^ Ah! is it not indeed.f^ 
Through one or another avenue it is 
plying us all the time. It is as old as the 



TO Man in Temptation 23 

human race and as perpetual. Its seat is 
in our human nature. Its possibility in 
that which is one of the chief glories of 
man, the freedom of his will, his conscious- 
ness, in spite of what the fatalism of the 
day, so rampant in much of our literature, 
would try to make him believe, his con- 
sciousness that he has the power of 
choice. Often, alas! we know only too 
well, it is dominated over by evil, held 
in bondage by sin. St. Paul's confession 
would be the confession of every one of us, 
if we would honestly make it: "That which 
I do, I allow not ; for what I would, that 
do I not ; but what I hate, that do I. The 
good that I would, I do not ; but the evil 
which I would not, that I do/' But it is 
there only needing assertion, only needing 
the vivifying force which St. Paul found 
and which any one of us may find. 

This is the conflict forever going on. 
Our inclinations of one sort and another are 
being continually appealed to by this and 
by that, and our will is resisting or 



24 The Voice o^ Jesus 

yielding. Every soul is a battle-field^ 
could we look on it as on a panorama 
we should see the hosts marshalled 
against each other marching and counter- 
marching, now advancing, now retreating^ 
now victorious, now defeated. 

**Christian ! dost thou see them 

On the holy ground, 
How the powers of darkness 

Rage thy steps around ? 

-TV" ^ ^ ^ -TT ^ ^ 

'^Christian ! dost thou feel them, 

How they work within. 
Striving, tempting, luring, 

Goading \x\X.Q sin. ?" 

is the old seventh century's way of putting 
it. 

Temptation ! Ah ! yes, you cannot tell 
me anything about that which I do not 
know, I seem to hear one say. Temptations 
which come into my being from without^ 
from conditions under which I live, those 
who are difficult to get along with making 
me petulant and irritable ; from seeing 



TO Man in Temptation 



25 



others in great prosperity, making me 
envious and bitter; from prosperity itself 
making me selfish and uncharitable; from 
methods in my business supposed to be 
necessary to success, making me daily 
smother my conscience; from what enter- 
eth in through the ear, corrupting my 
moral sense, perverting views of right 
and wrong which I have held from a child ; 
from what entereth in through the eye, 
the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, 
making me commit heart sin or do almost 
anything to equal or outdo my neighbor. 
And temptations which arise from within, 
all that list which the Maste ronce gave as 
coming out of the heart and defiling the 
man, evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, 
murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, 
deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blas- 
phemy, pride, foolishness. We recognize 
them do we not? We have felt their 
force, some of us one, others another. 
It may be that some have come in here 
this morning under this stress of life in 



26 The Voice of Jesus 

particular, heavy laden under the burden, 
under the felt power of temptation, sensi- 
ble of their weakness to cope with it, 
bowed down by repeated failure, about 
ready to give over the fight, to say it is 
no use, it is no use to try any more. 

. Ah! it might be but for one thing. 
Jesus, yes, Jesus was tempted and won. 
Jesus speaking to this stress of human 
life, we m.ight say almost in particular, for 
He was speaking of those burdened with 
the yoke of sin and the law, has said : 
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and 
are heavy laden and I will give you rest." 

Scarcely had He begun His ministry, 
as you know, before He was beset by temp- 
tation. It came to Him in the plausible 
way which often makes it so hard for us 
to resist, in the three forms which the story 
has made so familiar to us: That He 
should simply put forth His divine power 
to satisfy his bodily need. Why not? 
That if He lived by a higher law than that^ 
the essence of which was trust, then trust 



TO Man in Temptation 27 

utterly the protecting power of God, even 
to testing it needlessly. He came to 
make the kingdoms of this world the 
kingdoms of God and of his Christ. Why 
wait for the slow progress of truth, why 
tread the painful way of the cross, take 
thy power and reign, take it now. All 
plausible, all apparently that good might 
come. Nor was this all "The devil 
departed from Him," St. Luke says, "for a 
season," or possibly it should be ''until a 
season ;" until, that is, another convenient 
opportunity. And temptation came, and 
more than once. His own chosen disciple 
plied Him again w th the same appeal to 
spare himself suffering. "Jesus began to 
show unto His disciples, how, that He must 
suffer m^any things, and Peter took Him and 
began to rebuke himi, saying: "Be it far 
from thee, Lord, this sha,ll not be unto 
thee " "Get thee behind me Satan," Vv^as 
the quick repL . Again after the miracle 
of the loaves, the issue was before Him a 
second time, should He take the short, the 



28 The Voice of Jesus 

easy road to power. The people would 
have taken Him by force and made Him 
a king, but when He perceived it He depart- 
ed into a mountain himself alone. Later 
still, into what He called "your hour and 
the power of darkness,'' the agony in the 
Garden, the ''let this cup pass from 
Me," we must not penetrate, it is holy 
ground. ''If this cup may not pass from 
me except I drink it. Thy will be done." 
Aye, when He hung upon the cross: "If 
thou be the Son of God, come down from 
the cross and we will believe thee.'' 

Tempted! Yes, Jesus wast mpted, 
yet without sin. Each time He overcame. 
Each time He felt its force. Each time 
it was a real temptation, or we would have 
what we never could believe of Him a 
mere simulacrum of a temptation. Each 
time He put it away. 

Do we not begin now to see what is the 
voice of Jesus to the tempted, how to us in 
the midst of this stress He speaks, saying, 
'* Come unto Me and I will give you rest." 



TO Man in Temptation 29 

He was tempted. Through this ex- 
perience of human life He has passed. 
When it comes to me I may know that it 
came to Him too. Is there not strength 
and comfort in this ? Fellowship in suffer- 
ing does help, even when they are only 
our itllows J how much more when it is He. 
Dwell on that word of the Apostle, take it 
into your being: ''He was in all points 
tempted, like as we are, yet without sin." 

Again, it was the Incarnate Jesus w^ho 
was tempted. He had your nature and 
mine. Then your nature and mine was 
victorious in Him. Once at least it has 
met the enemy and has conquered. That 
victory is the earnest of mine. It is its 
pledge, aye, it is its potency, or it may be. 

Again, Jesus was tempted. And so 
He feels for you when you are tempted. 
He knows what it means. He has in Him 
the capac'ty for sympathy, He is at your 
side, could you but see Him, to keep your 
feet, to hold you up, to lift you v;hen you 
fall. Is He not ? '' The Lord turned and 



30 The Voice of Jesus 

looked upon Peter." And the Lord said: 
'' Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired 
to have you that he may sift you as wheat, 
but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail 
not." " We have not an high priest which 
cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities. For in that He Himself 
hath suffered being tempted, He is able to 
succour them that are tempted." 

But just here a thought will arise in 
your minds : This is all very well, but 
Jesus never felt temptation in the forms 
in which it comes to me. He never knew 
it in those baser forms, which are the ones 
aga^inst which m.an so often has to struggle. 
How can He know my conflicts.^ How 
can He sympathize with me, having never 
known the kind of warfare I have to wage ? 
But because the form may not be the same, 
does that rob you of the encouragement 
born of knowing that even such as He 
was tempted, does that do away with the 
quality of sympathy? The higher the 
nature the keener the temptation. Temp- 



TO Man in Temptation 31 

tation does not grow less but more strong, 
its suggestions more horrible as we come 
into the higher planes of nature and of 
soul. By so much as He was above you, 
holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from 
sinners were his temptations abhorrent, 
and with deeper feeling comes deeper 
sympathy. Yes, you have His sympathy, 
a deep true sympathy in that temptation 
you are struggling with now. " He will 
not suffer you to be tempted above that 
ye are able, but will with the temptation 
also make a way to escape that ye may be 
able to bear it," if you will walk in His 
way. And because we may not walk in 
it, because it is possible that we might 
fail in the conflict, therefore this merciful 
High Priest teaches us to pray, " lead us 
not into temptation '' 

Or another thought springs up in the 
mind, perhaps the one which seems more 
than any other to put the Master far away 
out of our sight, too high above us to be 
any satisfaction to us in an effort to be 



32 The Voice of Jesus 

victorious in temptation, in the presence of 
this stress to empty of comfort His invita- 
tion, " Come unto Me, and I will give you 
rest/' Jesus was the Son of God. By 
virtue of that, by His divine power He over- 
came. I am not He. I have it not. But see 
what were the means He used by which to 
overcome. Just such as we may. '' It was 
not;" indeed, it has been well said, " the 
victory of a man overcoming by sheer 
force of human will without the assistance 
of Divine grace. But neither was it the 
victory of a God overcoming by His 
Divine force, and silencing and ignoring 
His human feelings. It was the victory of 
One who had thrown His whole self into 
human conditions, and fought with no 
weapons but those which are common to 
men, such as prayer, fasting and vigilance. 
Christ's life was a life of faith, like that 
of His brethren. Not by drawing upon a 
reserve of super-human powers of His own 
did He resist temptation, but by a humble 
creaturely dependence upon God." 



TO Man in Temptation 33 

See how He met each of those in the 
wilderness. By the appeal to what was 
written in God's word, that man's whole 
nature is dependent upon God, and that 
care of him will follow as a result, not the 
object, that we must not tempt Providence, 
but that in the path of duty, not out of it, 
we may absolutely trust its protection ; 
that God alone is the object of our worship, 
and keeping only unto Him, in His own 
good time and way He will give us what 
we seek, and crown our effort with success. 
We can use any and all of these means. 

Are you then, any of you, burdened 
and heavy laden today, under the sense of 
the power of temptation and your ill- 
success in coping with it. Are you cast 
dovv^n in consequence, almost in despair? 
Then look away to the Master. Say to 
yourself. He knows what it is; I have His 
sympathy ; He was victorious ; His victory 
in a true sense was my victory, for He had 
my nature ; His means of resistance, every 
one of them, are all open to me. Use 



34 The Voice of Jesus 

them, use them with the consciousness of 
His presence to help you, His Word to 
cheer you, His Church to surround you 
with the aids for which He intended it, 
and see if the Devil will not leave you 
and angels come and minister unto you. 



SIi|i? ^mtt 0f StmxB t0 Mmi in 

Come zinto Me all ye that labour^ a?:(l are 
heavy ladeii^ and I will give yoii rest, — St. 
Matthew XL 28. 

The subject which is to engage our 
thoughts to-day is of a somewhat different 
kind from those we have hitherto con- 
sidered. We have heard what Jesus has 
to say to us amid the distractions and the 
temptations of life, to-day we are to listen 
for His voice as He speaks to those labor- 
ing and heavy laden under the stress of 
doubt. If the others had to do^ the former 
of them with the whole being, in the swift 
and intricate life most of us now live, the 
latter with the will plied through every 
avenue of approach ; this has to do with 
the mind, the mind in its effort to discover 
truth. None of us strangers to distrac- 
tions and temptations as enemies to our 
peace, there are some whose difficulties 
are not so much these as intellectual. 



36 The Voice of Jesus 

We are to try and speak a helpful 
word to them th^s morning, helpful, truly^ 
reliably helpful, because and in proportion 
as it is the word of Jesus. It is of com- 
paratively little moment to me or to you 
what any individual thinks, it is of infinite 
value and importance what Jesus teaches, 
what His message is to those seeking rest 
from whatever it is that disturbs. And 
more and more men are going straight to 
Him and asking ^'what is His Word?" 

'' The most striking fact in modern 
life," it has been truly said, " is the growing 
reverence for the teachings and character 
of Jesus Christ. As once his brother's 
sheaves bowed down before Joseph s sheaf, 
so to-day art, literature, law, trade, reform,, 
manifest more and more reverence for that 
Divine Teacher, whose sublime figure 
already fills the whole horizon, and whose 
teachings are founded as surely as the 
mountains and stars." This is why I have 
chosen the subject I have for these lectures. 
And only so far as I succeed in truly 



TO Man in Doubt 37 

setting before you Jesus, as He speaks to 
these various obstacles to our truest life, 
do I ask you to heed what is said. 

There are of course various forms ot 
doubt according to the character of the 
mind concerned, according to the nature 
of the subject in question. Time does not 
permit our going into these in detail. But 
you will bear me witness that I am truly 
stating the case, when I say that the 
demand of the day on the part of thinking 
people, with respect to Christian truth, is 
for demonstrable truths ; and if these be 
unfurnished the mental attitude is one of 
suspension. We do not know^; some of 
us even go farther, we cannot know, we 
will v/ait; we will not deny, neither will 
we assert. "We will not oppose, neither 
will we embrace. We wall simply do 
nothing. '' Oh, to be nothing,'' begfns one 
of the Revival Hymns. They realize this 
longing in themselves, only in a far differ- 
ent sense. 

This is the form of most of the doubt 



38 The Voice of Jesus 

of the day. It is witnessed to in thousands 
of men, who are simply letting alone the 
Christian Church, though they cannot but 
acknowledge the good it is doing, and 
want it in their town, want it for them- 
selves and for their children, in their 
deeper hours. It is witnessed to in our 
literature, yes, and withal, how unsatis- 
fying it is, in the sadness which runs 
through so much of it, which is so marked 
a characteristic even of its lighter forms. 
This on the one hand, and some are con- 
tent to remain in this simple negative 
position. And on the other stands a great 
organization, claiming infallibility, claim- 
ing the right of direction, substituting 
itself for personal thought and responsi- 
bility, and saying, come unto me all who 
know not what to think and find rest for 
your souls; and weary and heavy laden; 
welcoming an easy repose which they 
think they see, many heed ti.e call ; alas ! 
not always to find what they have so pain- 
fully, so costly sought- 



TO Man in Doubt 39 

There is another voice, however, utter- 
ing these same words, so large, so inclusive 
as to take in their embrace those labouring 
and heavy laden under the stress of doubts 
of the mind wrestling^ with truth. It is 
tim.e we tuned to Him. I take but a few 
portrayals on the Gospel page of Jesus in 
the presence of this difficulty of man, and 
I ask you to listen to Him. 

I pass by, except just to advert to them, 
His reply to Nicodemus : "Verily, verily 
I say unto thee, we speak that we do 
know, and testify that w^e have seen, and 
ye receive not our witness," the answer 
forever to that spirit which declares not 
only that we do not know, but that in- 
finitely worse one, that we cannot. His 
words to the nobleman, whose son was 
sick at Capernaum : " Except ye see signs 
and wonders ye will not believe," declaring 
as they do the v/orthlessness of a faith, the 
fruit of prodigy alone, with no change in 
the spirit of the one who witnesses it. 
His condemitation of those undisposed to 



40 The Voice of Jesus 

believe. His teaching so much by par- 
able, that those whose heart had waxed 
gross, hearing might hear and not under- 
stand, and seeing might see and not per- 
ceive. His commendation of those with 
minds open to the truth, ingenuous to 
receive it if they could, in His words : " I 
thank thee O Father, Lord of Heaven and 
earth, because thou hast hid these things 
from the wdse and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes, even so Father 
for so it seemed good in thy sight." And 
I go directly to the two occasions when 
the Saviour dealt especially with this diffi- 
culty of the humxan mind, and which say 
to us what most needs to be said, which 
have a most practical word to speak to 
any who may be wrestling with doubt. 

And first to that scene with St. Thomas, 
after the Resurrection, He was not with 
the other disciples when Jesus appeared 
in their midst, and showed them His hands 
and His side, and when they told Him, 
declared : " Except I shall see in His hands 



TO Man in Doubt 41 

the print of the nails, and put my finger 
into the print of the nails, and thrust my 
hand into His side, I will not believe/' 
The very demand, is it not, which men are 
making to-day for demonstrable truths, 
the evidence of the senses, of the miscro- 
scope, the crucible, the scalpel, applied to 
all truths? St. Thomas must always be 
an interesting character to such. In the 
famous statue of him by Thorwaldsen in 
the Church at Copenhagen he stands the 
thoughtful, meditative skeptic with a rule 
in his hand for the due measuring of 
evidence. How does Jesus deal with him ? 
First He offers him the evidence he 
desired : '' Reach hither thy finger and 
behold my hands, and reach hither thy 
hand and thrust it into my side," and noif^ 
be not faithless but become not faithless 
but believing. He did not want not to 
believe, he wanted to believe, all his hopes 
had been dashed by the crucifixion. He 
was in real perplexity in a matter of such 
overmastering importance, that he wanted 



42 The Voice of Jesus 

to be absolutely sure of his ground. He 
could not take the testimony of others, he 
must see for himself. And we respect him 
for it. He asked for no evidence which the 
others had not had, the sort of evidence 
for which the great forty days were, when 
Jesus showed himself alive after his passion 
by many infallible proofs. A certain wrong 
has been done St. Thomas in thinking of 
him as a skeptic. 

What does this first treatment of Jesus 
teach us ? This : there are doubters and 
doubters. To the doubter hugging his 
doubt, dallying with it or possibly affect- 
ing it, regarding it as a mark of superior 
intellect, too proud to admit that it has no 
good ground even when he sees it, doting 
on the words : 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt 
Believe me than in half the creeds." 

Vv^hile he distorts what their author meant 
and overlooks his adjective, Tesus would 
not have gone at all. The scorn He had 



TO Man in Doubt 43 

for the scorner is everywhere most marked, 
the protection He ever threw around the 
sacredness of His truth. Give not that 
which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye 
your pearls before swine." But one in real 
perplexity, honestly seeking the truth. He 
makes the special object of His care, hears 
the very words of his misgiving, comes 
into his presence, offers him the evidence 
he desires. 

But Jesus does not stop here. It would 
be a very imperfect setting forth of His 
dealing with doubt if we left the story 
there. St. Thomas apparently did not 
avail himself of the evidence offered him 
but in a transport of adoration exclaimed : 
" My Lord and my God." Jesus saith unto 
him : " Thomas, because thou hast seen 
Me thou hast believed, blessed are they 
that have not seen and yet have believed." 
Evidence of the senses is one thing, but 
there is something infinitely higher. Evi- 
dence of the senses is knowledge, but it 
leaves no room for faith, and faith has its 



44 The Voice of Jesus 

own value, for it has to do with our hearts 
and wills. Enough is given us to satisfy 
our reason, but not more. Some room is 
left for the higher faculty, or obliged to 
believe there would be no choice. " If 
you could prove that there is a God in the 
same way that you can prove that two and 
two make four," it has been truly said, " it 
would be w^orth to you just about as much 
as the knowledge that two and two make 
four." We must not depend our faith on 
that which destroys the very nature of 
faith. Faith is the evidence of things not 
seen, faith is assent upon trust. ^ Faith 
believes what it cannot know now com- 
pletely, but which one day it hopes it 
shall. There is a demonstration of the 
truths of Christ, but it comes after, not 
before belief. It is a demonstration of the 
Spirit. Jesus somewhat sadly says to St. 
Thomas : '* Because thou hast seen Me 
thou hast believed." Where could come 
in all the long line of after believers, w^ho 
were not to behold the bodily presence of 



TO Man in Doubt 45 

the Master, on that basis ? '' Blessed are 
they that have not seen and yet have 
believed," and there is room for all the 
generations of believers for all time. 

Here, then, we come to what is the 
condition of the question as to our belief 
in Christian truth as it presents itself to 
us to-day. 

V/e have not the visible bodily presence 
of Jesus. But we must not forget with 
regard to St. Thomas and the teaching of 
this incident, that he at last went infinitely 
farther than mere belief in the Resurrec- 
tion. He appropriated to himself the 
personal Christ, his Maker and his God, 
in those words of his : "' My Lord and my 
God." That He had read his inmost 
thoughts, that He had stooped to them in 
sympathy, that He was still his living 
Saviour, overwhelmed him. The personal 
Jesus in all that this revealed was enough. 
And that same personal Christ still living, 
though we see Him not, still knowing us 
through and through, still full of sympathy 



46 The Voice of Jesus 

for our unbelief, is the One who is pre- 
sented for our faith, the truest completest 
answer to all our doubts. Behold Him, 
His Person, his character, his teaching, his 
example, the historic Christ, behold Him 
with an open mind without prejudice, with 
sincerity of spirit, w^anting to accept Him 
as \'0ur Lord, and doubt any longer if you 
can. This is the supreme message to the 
doubter. 

The other occasion, one of the princi- 
pal ones, when Jesus touched upon this 
difficulty that men experience, was when 
to the Jews, marvelling at His teaching as 
He stood in the temple, He said : " My 
doctrine is not mine but His that sent me. 
If any man will do His will he shall know 
of the doctrine w^hether it be of God, or 
whether I speak of myself/' If any man 
willed to do His will, expresses better the 
sense of the original. It is not simply the 
verb auxiliary *'will.'' The human will to 
do the divine will is the condition of know- 
ing the teaching. N'o 07te is excluded. 



TO Man in Doubt 47 

Its sweep is as wide as the race. If any 
man, says the Master, will do His will, he 
shall know. 

Do you find yourself perplexed as to 
what to believe, among the multitude of 
counsellors saying this is truth, that is 
truth, coming to be a doubter of all truth ? 
Then hear the Master as He says, have 
you done what you do know? You are not 
ignorant of much of His will. You at 
least can say, as did Robertson, wrestling 
in darkness of soul, as he wandered alone 
in the Tyrol, '' Whatever else is doubtful 
this at least is certain, it is better to be 
generous than selfish, better to le chaste, 
than licentious, better to be true than false 
better to be brave than to be a coward/' 
Have you done this ? No man who is 
not living up to what he does know, has 
any right to say that he does not know 
more, and offer that as an excuse for being 
an unbeliever. Do God's will as far as 
you do know it, and you shall know. The 
pathway to faith is obedience. 



48 The Voice of Jesus 

" I have a life in Christ to live, 
But ere I live it, must I wait 

Till learning can clear answer give 
Of this and that book's date ? 

I have a life in Christ to live, 
I have a death in Christ to die : 

And must I wait till science give 
All doubts a full reply ? 

Nay, rather while the sea of doubt 

Is raging wildly round about, 

Questioning of life and death and sin, 

Let me but creep within 

Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet 

Take but the lowest seat. 

And hear Thine awful voice repeat. 

In gentlest accents heavenly sweet. 

Come unto Me and rest. 

Believe Me, and be blesf 



oil}^ l&Gxa 0f IVbus in Man in 

C(9/?/^ 2^///^ Afe all ye that labouf, and are 
heavy laden ^ and I will give you rest. — St. 
Matthew XI. 28. 

This invitation, reaching out as we 
have seen, in its comprehensiveness, to 
include those under the stress of Distrac- 
tion, of Temptation, and of Doubt, is 
to-day to be regarded as addressed to 
those under that of Poverty. There are 
none, perhaps, among all those we are to 
consider, to which the term more properly 
belongs. There are thousands of our 
fellow beings from whose minds it shuts 
out almost every other thought. There 
are those in every public assemblage into 
whose secret breasts, if you could pene- 
trate, you would find this weight over- 
bearing all. I speak not simply of the 
poverty of what we know as pauperism, 
with all its familiar train of consequent 
ills, but of the term in its larger sense, 



5o The Voice of Jesus 

humble circumstances, means inadequate 
to one's necessities, the condition of labor- 
ing hard for a bare living, and scarcely 
oftentimes making that. I take it in the 
full sense of where and wherever it means 
anxious care resting upon one, so that he 
can truly and rightly be said to labour and 
be heavy laden under it. As such it is a 
broad field that opens up before us, filled 
with countless human beings. " The most 
common, the most widely diffused, form 
of pain in the world," poverty has been 
called. " It is the prolific mother of an 
innumerable brood of ills. From it spring 
physical pain, mental distress, starvation 
of the affections, a thousand other mis- 
fortunes." 

Consider for a moment its operations 
as we see it in the different ways it comes 
to men. In its lowest form it calls up to 
the mind the worst sections of our great 
cities, with their narrow streets and over- 
crowded tenements, damp cellars and dark 
attics, with their coarse language and 



TO Man in Poverty 51 

brutal faces regard for even the decencies 
of life impossible, children growing up 
familiar with vice in all its forms, never 
anything to suggest to them anything 
better or higher, save where Christian 
solicitude has sought them out, or some 
parent, who has known other conditions, 
fights against her present ones, and will 
have her little ones learn of something 
different. But what a stress it is ! Here 
are buried purity and honor and patience 
and affection and every virtue. Here are 
born licentiousness and theft and hatred 
and intemperance and murder and every 
evil. Down into the maelstrom are going 
thousands every year of whom we never 
hear, the submerged Tenth who sink out of 
sight. And povert}^ largely the cause, not 
necessarily, thank God, but as things are, 
largely, chiefly, poverty which obliges them 
to live in such places, under such condi- 
tions. The unattractive home, — can we 
call it that, — drives the husband and father 
to the cheerful saloon for companionship, 



52 The Voice of Jesus 

the daily unenlivened struggle with only 
such results, forgets itself in drink, and 
this in turn, reacting, makes all the con- 
ditions already bad, worse. Ah ! yes, 
Solomon uttered many wise things, but 
not many truer than when he said: "The 
destruction of the poor is their poverty.'' 

But there is a fairer picture than this. 
We rise to that great company of men, 
and now miore and more largely of women 
too, the wage earners. I call them not the 
laboring men, for we are all that; the 
business man, the professional man, is just 
as much a laboring man as the mason or 
the carpenter, there is no such class dis- 
tinction ; the wage earners : those who 
constitute the rank and file of the great 
army of those engaged in making a living. 
Their stress, what is it ? Not of being of 
that great body, which always has, and 
probably always will, form the larger part 
of the human race, for this, as we shall see, 
should not be such. The stress which 
they feel, how justly or unjustly we are not 



TO Man in Poverty 53 

now saying, is that they have not and see 
no hope of having a larger share of the 
things of this life, that they must go on 
just as they are, nor only so, but see accu- 
mulated in individual or in corporate hands 
vast possessions which were more properly, 
more evenly distributed, see all that wealth 
brings paraded before their eyes and they 
having no part in it. And riches made 
the god they are, their acquisition to the 
average man the test of success, they fret 
under the feeling of having failed. And 
the fruit is restlessness, bitterness, social- 
ism, communism, anarchy, nihilism and 
such like. 

And then there are still others, whose 
condition is in some sort the hardest of 
all, the most trying, the miost difficult, 
cheerfully or resignedly to bear, namely : 
those who have seen better days, but who 
now, through misfortune or misdoing of 
themselves, not infrequently of others, or 
death of the bread-winner, are in strait- 
ened circumstances ; accustomed to all the 



54 The Voice of Jesus 

comforts, even the luxuries of life, and 
never having known anything else, obliged 
to adjust themselves to new and strange 
conditions. Real stress, believe me, is 
here, how real, how actual, let those say 
whose lot it is. Shut off from sources of 
relief open to others, and coming some- 
times too late in life to begin over again; 
habits and associations all formed, it is 
borne in secret, the heart knowing its own 
bitterness, with such grace as one may 
have or can derive. 

Turn we to the fountain head to slake 
our thirst, to the Rest Giver to find our 
rest. What hath the Master to say to it 
all ? He, one of the first of whose utter- 
ances was, " The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, because he hath annointed me 
to preach the Gospel to the poor." What 
is that Gospel ? 

Its first great word to this condition of 
so many thousands of our fellow-beings, is 
in what was true of Jesus himself. He 
was poor. He was born in a stable amid 



TO Man in Poverty 55 

the humblest conditions, born into the 
family of a peasant miechanic. He grew 
up in the simple life of a Galilean village, 
for thirty years knew no other, save as He 
went up with His parents to Jerusalem to 
keep the feast. Early in His public min- 
istry a certain scribe came to Him and 
said : " Master, I will follow Thee whither- 
soever Thou goest/' And Jesus saith unto 
him : '' The foxes have holes and the birds 
of the air have nests, but the Son of Man 
hath not where to lay His head." To 
follow Him was to share in poverty, pri- 
vation, homelessness. His lot was the same 
as that He enjoined upon His disciples 
when He said : " Provide neither gold nor 
silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip 
for your journey, neither two coats, neither 
shoes nor yet staves ;" and referring prob- 
ably not merely to the ineffable glory of 
the Divine attributes He laid aside when 
He became incarnate, but also to the out- 
ward aspects of His life, " Ye know,'' says 
the Apostle, " the grace of Our Lord Jesus 



56 The Voice of Jesus 

Christ, that though He was rich, yet, for 
your sakes, He became poor, that ye 
through His poverty might be rich.'' 

Is it then that the Gospel, the good 
news to the poor is this, simply that Jesus 
himself was poor, simply the principle 
that misery loves company ? To that one 
might say, it does not relieve, it only adds 
to the sense of my misfortune to know 
that some one else is in the same. Oh 
no ! not this, but something infinitely bet- 
ter. Not simply either — though there is 
comfort in this — that having known our 
state He can sympathize with us, can be, 
what He is revealed to us as, a sympathiz- 
ing Saviour, but this rather, that His was 
the life of what is and ever must be the 
life of the great body of mankind, and 
that great consequent truth that a man's 
life, true life, consisteth not in the abund- 
ance of the things that he possesseth, that 
he may be rich and have nothing, that he 
may be poor and have all things. He 
found it so, and so may we. Life is inde- 



TO Man in Poverty 57 

pendent of what may more or less be re- 
garded as its accidents. Life, true life, is 
often submerged in those things which 
men so much make the one great object 
of their pursuit, and think so essential to 
their happiness. The truest life is some- 
times lived by those who have the least. 
Somewhat of this may be meant by the 
words : " Thou O God of Thy goodness 
hast prepared for the poor,'' by the beati- 
tude " Blessed be ye poor for yours is the 
Kingdom of Heaven*" 

'' Was it then true ?" exclaimed one 
whose words from this place (though these 
were not of them) no one who heard them 
can ever forget. " Did that, which all 
men are accepting as the pattern life, 
come into the world and go out of the 
world, without a single sign of any care 
about those things which the great mass 
of men are struggling after, as if there 
could be no joy in life without them. Ah ! 
how vulgar and poor it makes the hunt 
for money seem ! How it ought to break 



58 The Voice of Jesus 

some of those heavy chains ! It is not 
necessary that you should be rich. There 
is no need of it whatever. Behold ! He 
who struck the highest, purest note of hu- 
man life, He who showed God to man, He 
who brought man to God, He who re- 
deemed the world — He was not rich, but 
poor. Oh ! blessed fact. What if it had 
been a rich man that saved the world ? 
How conspiring with all man's native pas- 
sion to be rich, the sight of the rich Re- 
deemer would have enlisted all our best 
ambitions in the struggle for the money, 
which must then have come to seem indis- 
pensable for the best life and work! How 
terrible that would have been ! Heaven 
and hell almost confederate to make ihe 
soul of man the slave of gold But, now, 
how different. Now, the life of Christ 
may be misread into a false glorification 
of poverty, but it can never be made to 
preach cupidity. Now, he who reads the 
story of Christ s life, knows, that to be 
rich, is not, and never can be the worthy 



TO Man in Poverty 59 

object of a human life. He who reads that 
story despises his own passion for money. 
He feels dropping out of his heart the 
base and brutal contempt for the poor 
man. And the poor man himself fills his 
soul with self-respect and strength, beside 
the cradle of the poor Jesus. Oh! is it 
not true that poor and rich, in th mselves 
and toward each other, can never be what 
they ought to be, so long as to both 
money seems to be the one desirable thing 
of life ? If that be so, must not the first 
leaf from the tree which is for the healing 
of the nations com^ in this fact; that the 
Son of Man — the Man of men — the Man 
who lived the richest life this world has 
ever seen — was born and lived and died 
in poverty ? " 

And then as a further word also to be 
spoken, there come, there is made possible 
all those graces which grow out of poverty. 
Patience, courage, charity, sympathy, all 
the virtues developed by the condition. 
Were all opulent where w^ould these things 



6o The Voice of Jesus 

be? At the bottom of all the warnings 
to the rich, is the danger of their losing 
them, the price they often pay for their 
riches. Not that abundance is not a 
blessing, for it is, perhaps on the whole 
it is favorable to morality, if it is regarded 
and used as a means, not an end. But 
" How hardly shall the rich man enter the 
Kingdom of Heaven." '' They that will 
be rich fall into temptation and a snare,'* 
for, ''the love of money is the root of all 
evil." And of these virtues again are born 
much that is constantly tending to amelio- 
rate the condition of those less fortunate, 
and blessing the doer as well as the recip- 
ient. To the pauper, thanks to the influ- 
ence of the principles, the spirit of Jesus, 
are coming increasingly, a more favorable 
environment, better houses, helpful diver- 
sions, a wiser charity. To the laboring- 
man, more humane hours, larger opportu- 
nity to be with his family, to provide them 
with something more than the bare neces- 
sit es of life, the possibility, again and 



TO Man in Poverty 6i 

again illustrated, of rising by worth, and 
to those reduced in circumstances, let us 
hope, more thoughtful consideration of the 
hardship of so great a change, more ability 
to accept it cheerfully. All these are 
traceable to the example and teaching of 
Him, who to all those who labor and are 
heavy laden says '' Come unto me and I 
will give you rest,'' who if the burden can- 
not be removed, and if it is not best that 
it should be, gives us strength to bear it, 
and in whom therefore is the hope of 
mankind. Not always freedom suffering 
but attainment by it. 

And finally a rectification some day 
of every wrong, the sure and certain hope 
of which cheers us on our way and bids 
us be of good courage. 

** From street and square, from hill and glen 
Of this vast world beyond my door, 
I hear the tread of marching men, 
The patient armies of the poor. 

Not ermine clad or clothed in state, 
Their title deeds not yet made plain ; 



62 The Voice of Jesus 

But waking early, toiling late, 
The heirs of all the earth remain. 

The peasant brain shall yet be wise 

The untamed pulse grow calm and still ; 

The blind shall see, the lowly rise, 

And work in peace Time's wondrous will. 

Some day, without a trumpet's call. 

This news will o'er the world be blown ; 

The heritage comes back to all ! 

The myriad monarchs take their own." 



211}^ T&ixm nf 3tBm tn Man in 

Come unto Me all ye that labour^ and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest, — St» 
Matthew XI. 28. 

Our subject this morning in the order 
of those experiences of which I have 
spoken as constituting the stress of life, is 
the Voice of Jesus to Man in Discourage- 
ment. Akin to those we have considered, 
it is yet distinct from them, follows not 
infrequently as their result. Torn with the 
distractions of life which succeed so rap- 
idly one upon the other, one falls into 
satiety of its festivities or the hopelessness 
of ever rescuing any time for the higher ex- 
ercises of the mind or soul. Wrestling with 
temptation, often only to encounter morti- 
fying defeat, the greatest one of all ensues, 
to give over the contest altogether, to say 
it is no use, no use for me to try any 
longer. Struggling with doubt and failing 



64 The Voice of Jesus 

to find intellectual satisfaction, one des- 
pairs of ever knowing what is truth, and 
falls into careless indifference ; and suffer- 
ing the hardships of poverty, no end to 
which can be seen, one settles down to a 
stoical, cheerless endurance of its ills until 
all is over ia the grave. Discouragement, 
the outcome of them all, sometimes from 
one, sometimes from another, sometimes 
from more than one. And these are but 
examples of causes. There are a hundred 
othrrs. They are as many as the various 
conditions of life are many. 

The company of discouraged people, 
how great it is ! Many whom we hear of 
or see, many more who shut up their 
despondency in the privacy of their own 
breasts and carry it secretly to the last. 
Disappointed ambitions, disappointed 
hopes for themselves often, yet more 
for others. Its grimmest effects are to 
be seen in our prisons and reformato- 
ries, in our hospitals and insane asylums, 
in the long annual array of suicides. 



TO Man in Discouragement 65 

There is a prayer that v;as proposed for 
our Revised Prayer Book which I have 
never ceased to regret failed to be intro- 
duced, I know not why, it is so tender 
and so sweet, so mercifully takes into ac- 
count all those of whom we are speaking : 

^' O God, Almighty and merciful, who healest 
those that are broken in heart and turnest the 
sadness of the sorrowful to joy, let Thy fatherly 
goodness be upon all that Thou hast made. 
Especially we beseech Thee to remember in pity 
such as are this day destitute, homeless or for- 
gotten of their fellowmen. Bless the congrega- 
tion of Thy poor. Uplift those who are casi^ 
dcwn^ mightily befriend innocent sufferers, and 
sanctify to them the endurance of their wrongs. 
Cheer with hope all discouraged and unhappy 
people and by Thy heavenly grace preserve from 
falling those whose penury tempteth them to sin. 
Though they be troubled on every side, suffer 
them not to be distressed, though they be per- 
plexed, save them from despair. Grant this, 
O Lord, for the love of Him, who for our sakes 
became poor, Thy Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.'' 

It is of all such that I am thinking, 
but not only as thus manifested. The 



66 The Voice of Jesus 

truth is, the mental and moral attitude of 
the day is largely one of discouragement 
and despondency. It has come in no 
small degree from that spirit whose strong 
note has been to subject everything to 
accurate analysis, and accept nothing not 
so discovered, and the disappointment 
which has followed the discovery that a 
point is reached at last, beyond which 
knowledge cannot go, and the soul of man 
still unsatisfied Albert Durer's subtile 
print well sets it forth. The genius of 
knowledge and toil, in an hour of pause 
from labor, sits in an attitude of arrested 
thought, her cheek upon her hand, her 
compasses idle, her book unread, her in- 
struments scattered idly at her feet, her 
keys unused, her eyes gazing into the 
void, her very wolf-hound fast asleep. The 
1 6 squares of the window above each has 
a number, which in whatever direction you 
add them make the same sum, 34, the 
symbol of exactitude. An hour glass, the 
sands half run. The sun has set, a fiery 



TO Man in Discouragement 67 

comet menaces the world below, and 
across the sky flies a bat with outstretched 
wings and bearing a scroll on which is 
written '' Melencolia/' 

It fs such as to have struck observers. 
'* Never, I believe,'' says Paul Desjardins, 
*'have men been more universally sad 
than in the present time." One of the 
most striking evidences of it, and one 
which the grc at body of the people are 
encountering and imbibing all the time 
is seen in the lighter literature devoured 
in such quantities. " Why is the fic- 
tion ot today so depressing? is a ques- 
tion that is frequently asked," says a 
writer in a recent number of The Outlook. 
'^ Why in the century just closed, the cen- 
tury of the most tremendous progress, the 
most humane theories, the most emotional 
charities, has the fiction been so hope- 
less, and the music the saddest the world 
has ever heard?" 

We are not now so much concerned 
with the causes as we are with the fact 



68 The Voice of Jesus 

and with its cure. It must be familiar 
to us all. One may have one theory, 
another, another. What we want to know 
is, not does it exist, but is it hopeless ? 

What has the Supreme Voice to say to 
it ? What is the word that Jesus speaks 
to Discouragement and Despondency.'^ 
Not that all voices, even human voices, 
strike this note. Noble words have been 
spoken by many, a reaching out for a 
firmer faith, a determination not to des- 
pair, a suggestion of various expedients. 

** Ah yet ! — I have had some glimmer at times 
in my gloomiest woe, 
Of a God behind all — after all — the great God 
for aught that I know." 

is one. 

** There will come a weary day 

When, overtaxed at length, 
Both hope and love beneath 

The v/eight give way. 
Then with a statue's smile, 

A statue's strength, 
Patience, nothing loth, 

And uncomplaining, does 
The work of both.'' 

is another. 



TO Man in Discouragement 69 

But we want something better, some- 
thing surer than these, to lead us to the 
light. '' How beautiful your place is," 
said one to an old country w^oman who 
lived in a green little valley entirely sur- 
rounded by mountains. " Yes, yes, but 
it's too shut in — too shut in. Why I have 
to look up to see out" In discourage- 
ment we too have to look up to see out. 

Let us do so, up to the Person of Jesus. 
Even in Durer's print there was also a 
rainbow. 

There are not wanting in the story 
of the life of Jesus illustrations of what 
perhaps might not be termed discourage- 
meat but certainly disappointment, so giv- 
ing at least the assurance of having His 
sympathy in ours, and sympathy has its 
value, does bring solace. The Pharisees 
sought of Him a sign from heaven tempt- 
ing Him, and " He sighed',' St. Mark tells 
us, " deeply in His spirit " as He asked, 
" Why doth this generation ask after a 
sign." '' And ye will not come to me,'' 



70 The Voice of Jesus 

He said pathetically, '' that ye might have 
life." In sorrow of sympathy with Mary's 
tears, mingled with indignation at the 
mockery of sorrow in the Jews weeping 
with her,who presentl y sought to kill whom 
they mourned, Jesus " groaned in the spirit 
and was troubled." And a little later at 
their sceptical words, Jesus ''again groan- 
ing in himself, cometh to the grave." Was 
there not disappointment, almost despair, 
that thev would ever know the thino;s 
that belonged unto their peace, in His 
weeping over Jerusalem, when they shout- 
ed their hozannas, but with no acceptance 
of Him as King, disappointment that cut 
Him to the quick, that one of His twelve 
chosen disciples should prove false and 
betray Him ? Let every disappointed, dis- 
couraged one get such solace and encour- 
agement out of this as He can. 

But this is not the great voice of Jesus 
to us under such conditions. His word 
to all under the stress of discouragement 
s a double one. 



TO Man in Discouragement 71 

First, it is a word of cheer. We are 
struck with how this was the word that 
He was constantly speaking. They bring 
unto Him once a man sick of the palsy, 
especially cast down apparently, perhaps 
from the consciousness that his disorder 
was the penalty of some special sin, since 
forgiveness of his sins was first granted, 
and Jesus meets him with the word '' Son, 
be of good cheer." The ship bearing the 
disciples is tossing about on the stormy 
lake of Gennesaret, Jesus draws near walk- 
ing upon the water, and when the disciples 
saw Him they were troubled saying it is a 
spirit, and they cried out for fear. But 
straightway Jesus spake unto them saying, 
"Be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid.' 
Once again, He is telling His disciples 
in those wonderful chapters in which St. 
John has recorded for us what He said to 
them on the night of the Last Supper, what 
should befal them, and what should be 
their stay, and thus He brought it to a 
close : — '' These things I have spoken unto 



72 The Voice of Jesus 

you that in me ye might have peace. In 
the world ye shall have tribulation but 
be of good cheer I have overcome the 
world;' 

It was essentially the same when 
He did not employ this particular word, 
" Let not your heart be troubled ; ye be- 
lieve in God believe also in Me." To 
Zaccheus, the despised publican, who 
would not have thought favor possible 
from the Christ, '' Zaccheus, make haste 
and come down for today I must abide at 
thy house.'' To the two disciples, des- 
pondent after the crucifixion, He draws 
near and asks, " What manner of commu- 
nications are these that ye have one to 
another as ye walk and are sad ?" Ever 
the helpful word, to look up and not down, 
to be hopeful not disheartened, to be calm 
not disturbed, to be cheerful not discour- 
aged. His own sense of disappointment, 
when He felt it, was always only when 
men were missing what they might be, 
what would lift them above everything 



TO Man in Discouragement 73 

that was dark and disapppointing. Yes, 
Jesus was in the best sense of the word 
an optimist. He had a sublime faith in 
men, in what was in them, in the ultimate 
power of the truth that it would surely, 
that it must surely overcome in the end, 
that the gates of hell should not prevail 
against His Church. " Fear not little flock, 
for it is your Father's good pleasure to 
give you the Kingdom." And every one 
who believes in Him must be an optimist 
also. 

And then, secondly, it is a word of 
strength and support. The power to meet 
bravely, and in the best sense successfully, 
what perhaps cannot, and is not desirable 
that it should, be done away. Not always 
deliverance from what weighs one down 
but strength to rise above it. Not the 
cheer of no battle to fight, but of all those 
promises to him that overcometh. This, 
too, is Christ's message to the discouraged. 
Yes, and this specifically was what was 
offered in that invitation which has been 



74 '^HE Voice of Jesus 

the great undertone text of all these lec- 
tures, '' Come unto Me all ye that labour 
and are heavy laden and I will give you 
rest." It is wide enough as we have seen 
to cover all labor, all heaviness, but it was 
spoken at the time with those especially 
in mind burdened with the yoke of sia 
and of the law which was added because 
of sin. It was in noble contrast to what 
others were offering. Those only made 
the burden heavier. He did not promj'se 
immunity from all sin and suffering, but 
rest in the soul, bearing it up against and 
through it all. *' Ta^e my yoke upon you,'^ 
He continues, " and learn of Me, for I am 
meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy 
and my burden is light.'' The world pro- 
poses a rest by the removal of a burden. 
The Redeemer gives rest by giving us the 
spirit and the power to bear the burden, 
and the true disciple's exclamation is that 
which was St. Paul's, " Thanks be unto 
God which always causeth us to triumph 
in Christ." 



TO Man in Discouragement 75 

As you look then into your own soul 
and see there the daily fight with sin, the 
old enemy put down, but again and again 
renewing the conflict, are you discouraged ? 
Be not dismayed. Those that be with 
you are more than those that are against. 
*' Son be of good cheer thy sins be forgiven 
thee." In the new born peace of sins for- 
given brace yourself for the battle and 
know that victory must be, " in the strength 
that Cometh by the holy cross " 

As you look out upon the world and 
see apparently " Truth forever on the scaf- 
fold, wrong forever on the throne," are 
you discouraged ? Son be of good cheer. 
" Behind the dim unknown standeth God 
within the shadow, keeping watch above 
His own." " The Lord is King be the 
people never so impatient. He sitteth be- 
tween the Cherubim be the earth never so 
unquiet, He will not suffer His truth to 
fail." 

As you labor among your fellowmen, 
perhaps among the outcast and degraded. 



76 The Voice of Jesus 

for the iniquity and wretchedness that has 
overtaken them scarcely able to see in 
them the divine image in which they 
were created, sinking deeper and deeper 
for all you can do, are you discouraged 
over your merciful task ? Be of good 
cheer. Since Jesus has shared their na- 
ture, has made them the objects of His 
love in life and death, we must look on 
them with awful reverence and hope. 

As you contemplate the satiety and 
the sadness which as we have seen so char- 
acterize our time and so colors our litera- 
ture, perhaps have felt it yourself without 
exactly knowing why, except that a cer- 
tain despondency has taken possession of 
you, is this your inward care ? Then re- 
member, this very inquietude is the sign of 
better things, is the witness to for what 
you were made, is the soul of man saying 
with St. Augustine, " Thou madest us for 
Thyself, O God, and our hearts are rest- 
less till they rest in Thee," is the hope of 
our finding Jesus' remedy for discourage- 



TO Man in Discouragemnt 77 

ment in His "Come unto Me," the ever 
hopeful hoping Master. We too, to look 
out, must look up. 



Come unto Ale all ye that laboury and are 
heavy laden^ and I will give you rest, — St 
Matthew XI. 28. 

We come this morning to the last of 
that series of subjects we have been con- 
sidering together on these weekdays in 
Lent, namely, the Voice of Jesus as He 
speaks to man in the stress of sorrow. I 
have purposely kept it to the last, for as 
we draw nearer and nearer the shadow of 
the Cross, it is both timely and in keeping 
with our own deepening frame of mind. 

But have we not already had it before 
us } The Voice of Jesus to men under 
the stress of Temptation for instance, of 
Poverty, of Discouragement, yes, and 
sometimes of Doubt, is not that it too in 
Sorrow } Yes and no. These often cause 
it and most genuinely. And yet we have 
in mind something different w^hen we use 



TO Man in Sorrow yg 

the term. We use it in a deeper and 
more poignant sense. Somehow it sug- 
gests to us chiefly those suffering under 
the sorrow of bereavement, the heart ach- 
ing under the loss of some one perhaps 
dearer to us than life, when the sun seems 
gone from the sky, and as if for us it could 
never shine again. Not limiting it to 
this, though it is its most frequent appli- 
cation, we want to listen to Jesus as He 
says to all labouring and heavy laden un- 
der sorrow, " Come unto Me and I will 
give you rest," and to see how it is that 
He does so. 

Did you never think how the fact of 
His speaking to this experience of human 
life, of His ability to speak to it under- 
standingly and with efficacy, constitutes 
one of His great claims to our love, one 
of His capacities to be unto us a Saviour, 
is what binds our hearts so closely to Him. 
Not that He does not touch all our life, 
ali its moods, with His Divine hand, sanc- 
tifies our joys, consecrates our strength 



8o The Voice of Jesus 

and our vigor, for He does. But that He 
goes and can go down with us into the 
deep and bring us up again. *' Imagine 
for a moment," writes another, '' a pre- 
tended Christ, who demanded our faith 
chiefly on the score of his interest in our 
happier moments, how the burdened heart 
of the world, and even of the happiest 
hearts in it, would turn from him disap- 
pointed ! If He did not sigh for us we 
should still have to sigh for each other, 
and then to turn and sigh still for a Sa- 
viorir that would sigh for us — only in 
Him acknowledging the Master of our 
life and of our death." 

See then Jesus in His relation to this 
aspect of human life, where and how He 
touched it, nay, how He illuminated even 
it. At the very threshhold He is no 
stranger to it. 

*' The year begins with Thee 
And Thou beginn'st with woe,'' 

are the opening lines of the Christian Poet 



TO Man in Sorrow 8i 

for the festival that falls on New Year's 
day. 

^' Art thou a child of tears, 

Cradled in care and woe ? 
Look here and hold thy peace. 

The Giver of all good 
Even from the womb takes no release 

From suffering, tears, and blood." 

So, too, as we saw with reference to 
His message to the poor, the Spirit of the 
Lord is upon me He said, because also He 
hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted. 
It was one of the great purposes of His 
ministry, announced at the very outs et 
This was the unction from the Holy One, 
which made Him the Christ, the True 
anointed of the Lord. It is only there- 
fore what we should expect, to find Him 
every where the compassionate Saviour. 
A certain poor widow was carrying out 
her only son for burial, '* And when the 
Lord saw her He had compassion on her 
and said weep not, and He came and 
touched the bier and said, " Young man, 



82 The Voice of Jesus 

I say unto thee, arise." " There came a 
leper to Him beseeching Him and kneel- 
ing down to Him and saying unto Him, 
if thou wilt thou canst make me clean. 
And Jesus, moved with compassion, put 
forth His hand and touched him and saith 
unto him, '' I will, be thou clean." He 
knew what it was to mourn the loss of 
friends, and the sorrowing heart of hu- 
manity has rested itself in that simplest, 
shortest of Bible verses, '' Jesus wept," as 
even in the fires it sings, 

** Christ leads us through no darker rooms 
Than He went through before,'' 

and rejoices in the fellowship of His suf- 
ferings. He knew the sting of ingratitude, 
of heart sickness, when men would not see 
what belonged unto their peace, and when 
He was come near He beheld the city and 
wept over it, silent tears before, but now 
He wept aloud. Yes, He was a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief, and 
surely He hath borne our griefs and car- 



TO Man in Sorrow 83 

ried our sorrows, and therefore we are 
certain of His sympathy. 

But we do not have to content our- 
selves, only with these general considera- 
tions. He has a more special word to 
speak to human sorrow. The first great 
one occurs in what has so impressed un- 
believer as well as believer, that which we 
know as the Sermon on the Mount, forms 
one of the beatitudes wath which it opens/ 
" Blessed," He said, " are they that mourn, 
for they shall be comforted." The word 
is commonly coupled with weeping. " Be 
afiflicted and mourn and weep," says St. 
James It is a universal experience. No 
life from which sooner or later in some 
form it is absent. To the reason for it, 
why it is permitted, to its removal or its 
alleviation, to the question how it is to be 
received, men have addressed themselves 
in all ages of the world. Left to itself, 
the spirit of man, in the presence of it, 
has ranged from the mad defiance of a 
Henley to stoical endurance. There have 



84 The Voice of Jesus 

been comforters by the score. You may 
read of some of them in the Book of Job. 
But it was left for Jesus to rise above 
them all, to transmute trial into a blessing, 
to lift up sorrow even into a beatitude. 
No one before had ever said blessed are 
they that mourn. The world had been 
waiting like the aged Simeon, waiting for 
the consolation of Israel. Behold, here 
He was and blessed was the mourner, said 
He, for sorrow was an angel in disguise, 
blessed was the mourner for he should be 
comforted. 

Does not experience confirm it ? 
Some of the best blessings have come 
to the sufferer through his sufferings. He 
has been made most truly strong by means 
of them. Some of the greatest gifts to 
the world in literature, in art, in music, 
have been made in and because of suffer- 
ing. Out of his blindness wrote Milton 
his Paradise Lost, out of his pain over the 
loss of his friend Tennyson his In Mem- 
oriam. In his poverty Millet painted the 



TO Man in Sorrow 85 

Angelas. " My compositions," wrote Schu- 
bert in his journal, ''are the result of my 
abilities and my distress, and those which 
distress alone has engendered appear to 
give the world most pleasure/' "We shroud 
the cages of birds," said Richter, " when 
we would teach them to sing." 

You have asked Him, no doubt, to take 
away that which is troubling you ; to let 
the cup, whatever it may be, pass from 
you. But it has not, you have had to 
drink it to the dregs. And yet, and yet 
in some richer view of life and quickened 
sense of its deeper purposes, and in a 
chastened but stronger spirit, the word 
has come to you : '' Blessed are they that 
mourn, for they shall be comforted," and 
you have begun to see that it is true. 

The next word that Jesus has to speak 
to this form of stress, is summed up in 
what we may call His doctrine of the 
Cross. It entered His own life, as we are 
seeing especially at this time, and through 
the week that lies before us. The shadow 



86 The Voice of Jesus 

of the cross ! A great painter has thrown 
it upon the wall behind the Saviour, as at 
the close of day he stood in the doorway 
of the carpenter shop at Nazareth, and 
stretched out his arms in weariness after 
His toil. It was never absent thereafter. 
It was there as He lamented the unbelief, 
the ingratitude of those He came to save. 
It was there as He told His disciples again 
and again that He must go up to Jerusa- 
lem and suffer many things of the elders, 
and chief priests and scribes and be killed. 
It was there, Oh ! yes, was it not, in the 
garden, ere yet He hung upon it, as He 
sweat great drops of blood under the bur- 
den of the world's sin, and in the ante- 
cedent victory there won, bowed in self 
sacrifice to the Father's will. It sur- 
mounted the hill without a city wall where 
the dear Lord was crucified. 

And as it was not apart from His 
life, He tells us it cannot be from that of 
the disciple. As with the Master so with 
the servant. *' If any man will come after 



TO Man in Sorrow 87 

me let him take up his cross and follow 
me. He that taketh not his cross and 
followeth after me is not worthy of me. I 
came not to send peace but a sword." 

Man's thought, man's effort is to do away 
with it It is the aim of that modern Gos- 
pel of man, or rather of woman, which for 
the time being is having such a following, 
to eliminate pain and sorrow, to eradicate 
the cross from human life. It is a fruit- 
less aim. It never can be done in this 
world of sin. It will be the doom of 
Christian Science, so called, if made its 
central feature Strength by suffering 
attainment through sacrifice, is the law of 
of the Christian life. Even the Captain 
of our salvation made perfect through 
sufferings, the true prayer of every under 
soldier:- — ''Almighty God, whose most 
dear Son went not up to joy, but first He 
suffered pain, and entered not into glory 
before He was crucified, mercifully grant 
that we, walking in the way of the Cross, 
may find it none other than the way of 



88 The Voice of Jesus 

life and peace, through Jesus Christ, our 
Lord/' 

Another word of Jesus to those in 
Sorrow has to do with that with which 
we said the term is usually associated, 
that of bereavement. It is that great 
word of His to one of that little household 
in the midst of which He seems to have 
had more sense of home than anywhere 
else while He was upon the earth, when 
all but overwhelmed with grief at the loss 
of her brother, Martha said unto Jesus, 
'' Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother 
had not died. But I know that even now 
whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God 
will give it Thee.'' '* Jesius saith unto her 
thy brother shall rise again/' But as if 
that were a far off answer to her cry, and 
what should she do all the intervening 
waiting years, as though that utterly failed 
to meet her present need, Martha saith 
unto Him, '' I know that he shall rise 
again in the resurrection at the last day." 
Jesus said unto her, '' I am the Resurrec- 



TO Man in Sorrow 89 

tion and the Life " I your personal pre- 
sent living Lord, '' I am the Resurrection, 
he that believeth in Me, though he were 
dead yet shall he live, and whosoever 
liveth and believeth in Me shall never 
die." 

'' We conquer," it has been said, the 
pagan thought "lost forever," but we are 
often conquered by the thought " lost for 
the present." The lonely bleeding heart 
cries out for companionship, for the lost 
companionship now. And lo ! He says, 
you may have it. If those asleep in Jesus 
are with Him and we are with Him, we 
are with them. 

So helpful I have known them to be to 
many persons, some words that embody 
this truth, I cannot refrain from giving 
them to you. 

"Beside the dead I knelt for prayer, 
And felt a presence as I prayed : — 

Lo, it was Jesus standing there — 
He smiled — be not afraid. 



90 The Voice of Jesus 

Lord, Thou hast conquered death we know, 

Restore again to life, I said, 
This one who died an hour ago. 

He smiled — he is not dead. 

Asleep, then, as Thyself didst say ; 

Yet Thou canst lift the lids that keep 
His prisoned eyes from ours away. 

He smiled — he doth not sleep. 

Alas ! too well we know our loss, 
Nor hope again our joys to touch 

Until the stream of death we cross. 
He smiled — there is no such. 

Yet our beloved seem so far 

The while, wq year?i to feel them near, 
Albeit, with Thee, we trust they are. 

He smiled — and I am here. 

Dear Lord, how shall we know that they 
Still walk unseen with us and Thee, 

Nor sleep nor wander far away ? 
He smiled — Abide in Me." 

Finally, there is that word of Jesus 
which He made good after His Resurrec- 
tion, of which we make all too little, but 
revealing one whole function of His per- 
petual spiritual presence with His people. 



TO Man in Sorrow 91 

*' I will pray the Feather and He shall give 
you another Comforter that He may abide 
with you forever. I will not leave you 
comfortless. I will come to you." Com^ 
forter, in the full sense of Paraclete, not 
merely one who consoles, but who stands 
at our side to counsel, to guide, to plead, 
to strengthen. "Strengthen them we be- 
seech the, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost 
the Comforter," we pray in the Confirm.a- 
tion Office. It is in exact accordance with 
the Saviours promise, it is His word to 
those in the stress of sorrow which crowns 
them all, which does not leave them to 
themselves, but strong in the strength 
which God supplies through His eternal 
Son. May He grant it to us every one. 






IM) ) 



'l,<)i'n,!'„ 



